The Lucky Piece: A Tale of the North Woods

by Albert Bigelow Paine

"I recall nothing of that first meeting but her. I saw nothing but her. I think we danced—we may have played games—it did not matter. There was nothing for me but her face. When it was over, I took her in my cutter and we drove together across the snow—along the moonlit shore. I do not remember what we said, but I think it was very little. There was no need. When I parted from her that night the heritage of eternity was ours—the law that binds the universe was our law, and the morning stars sang together as I drove homeward across the hills.

"That winter and no more holds my happiness. Yet if all eternity holds no more for me than that, still have I been blest as few have been blest, and if I have paid the price and still must pay, then will I pay with gladness, feeling only that the price of heaven is still too small, and eternity not too long for my gratitude."

The hermit's voice had fallen quite to a whisper, and he was as one who muses aloud upon a scene rehearsed times innumerable. Yet in the stillness of that dim room every syllable was distinct, and his listeners waited, breathless, at each pause for him to continue. Into Frank's eyes had come the far-away look of one who follows in fancy an old tale, but the eyes of Constance shone with an eager light and her face was tense and white against the darkness.

"It was only that winter. When the spring came and the wild apple was in bloom, and my veins were all a-tingle with new joy, I went one day to tell her father of our love. Oh, I was not afraid. I have read of trembling lovers and halting words. For me the moments wore laggingly until he came, and then I overflowed like any other brook that breaks its dam in spring.

"And he—he listened, saying not a single word; but as I talked his eyes fell, and I saw tears gather under his lids. Then at last they rolled down his cheeks and he bowed his head and wept. And then I did not speak further, but waited, while a dread that was cold like death grew slow upon me. When he lifted his head he came and sat by me and took my hand. 'My boy,' he said, 'your father was my friend. I held his hand when he died, and a year later I followed your mother to her grave. You were then a little blue-eyed fellow, and my heart was wrung for you. It was not that you lacked friends, or means, for there were enough of both. But, oh, my boy, there was another heritage! Have they not told you? Have you never learned that both your parents were stricken in their youth by that scourge of this coast—that fever which sets a foolish glow upon the cheek while it lays waste the life below and fills the land with early graves? Oh, my lad! you do not want my little girl.'"

The hermit's voice died, and he seemed almost to forget his listeners. But all at once he fixed his eyes on Constance as if he would burn her through.

"Child," he said, "as you look now, so she looked in the moment of our parting. Her eyes were like yours, and her face, God help me! as I saw it through the dark that last night, was as your face is now. Then I went away. I do not remember all the places, but they were in many lands, and were such places as men seek who carry my curse. I never wrote—I never saw her, face to face, again.

"When I returned her father was dead, and she was married—to a good man, they told me—and there was a child that bore my name, Robin, for I had been called Robin Gray. And then there came a time when a stress was upon the land—when fortunes tottered and men walked the streets with unseeing eyes—when his wealth and then hers vanished like smoke in the wind—when my own patrimony became but worthless paper—a mockery of scrolled engravings and gaudy seals. To me it did not matter—nothing matters to one doomed. To them it was shipwreck. John Farnham, a high-strung, impetuous man, was struck down. The tension of those weeks, and the final blow, broke his spirit and undermined his strength. They had only a pittance and a little cottage in these mountains, which they had used as a camp for summer time. It stood then where it stands to-day, on the North Elba road, in view of this mountain top. There they came in the hope that Robin's father might regain health to renew the fight. There they remained, for the father had lost courage and only found a little health by tilling the few acres of ground about the cottage. There, that year, a second child—a little girl—was born."

It had grown very still in the hermitage. There was only a drip of the rain outside—the thunder had rolled away. The voice, too, ceased for a little, as if from weariness. The others made no sign, but it seemed to Frank that the hand locked closely in his had become quite cold.

"The word of those things drifted to me," so the tale went on, "and it made me sad that with my own depleted fortune and failing health I could do nothing for their comfort or relief. But one day my physician said to me that the air and the altitude of these mountains had been found beneficial for those stricken like me. He could not know how his words made my heart beat. Now, indeed, there was a reason for my coming—an excuse for being near her—with a chance of seeing her, it might be, though without her knowledge. For I decided that she must not know. Already she had enough burden without the thought that I was near—without the sight of my doleful, wasting features.